Branches of Ceramics

Generally speaking ceramics are clustered into two categories. These are called "traditional" or "advanced". The traditional category is generally the one where consumer goods are located. Anything that is used for day to day use like dishes, ovenware or other utensils that may be used in a kitchen are the traditional ceramics.

When an industry takes ceramics to look at their other components like the mechanical, electrical, optical or other ways to use the product, it becomes a more commercial strength and is used in a bigger way. There are also refectories and they are used in iron and steel making. There are a variety of products that are made through the use of ceramics in both of these branches. Some are listed below (courtesy of The American Ceramic Society):

Traditional Branches of Ceramics:

- Structural clay products like bricks, sewer pipes, roofing tile
- Things like dinnerware or electrical porcelain
- Different kinds of glasses like flat or container glass.
- Natural and Synthetic Diamonds

Advanced Branches of Ceramics:

- Automotive parts like brakes, rotors or spark plugs
- Aerospace parts like thermal insulation or satellite positioning equipment
- Optical parts for dental and medical
- Optical parts for telecommunications.

Ceramic branches are really about the materials that are used to do things in our world. When you understand that these branches are the foundation of what ceramics will do, then you can take this into an understanding of different places where it can be used.

Ceramics in Construction:

You will find some sort of ceramics in all kinds of building materials. You will see it in the floors, countertops and fireplaces. You can see that many new homes have applied ceramic floors for a new kind of stoned looked. You will also see that ceramics are used for decoration around a fireplace to add color to a room.

Clay bricks will often be used in areas where hurricanes or other natural disasters occur because they are very strong and often can withstand these elements when other building materials will falter.

Ceramics in Aerospace:

Ceramic coatings are used a lot by the military and by other governmental divisions because they are sturdy and last a long time. In fact, ceramics have been used the space shuttle.

The biggest place that ceramics are used is in aircraft and space shuttles because the fibers act as fire protectors and thermal insulation so that the crafts won't blow up as the engines heat up. The ceramics resist heat and are light weight.

Another industry where ceramics play a large part is in sports. You will find them in race car brakes and in some golf clubs. With golf clubs it makes a good putter because it is light weight and they are tough. So, the average golfer can throw them or otherwise abuse them and they will still help them make an even swing.

Ceramics and Electronics:

You probably know that ceramics have been used in many of your electronic equipment from radios to GPS devices. They are used to do a variety of things within this equipment. Many of the new laptops and PCs will have tiny ceramic transistors in them that will give them more speed and take up less space inside them.

Ceramics in Medicine:

There are medical breakthroughs that are using ceramics. As an example, cancer patients are benefiting from glass beads called TheraSpheresTM that are actually very tiny and made radioactive through a specific process. These are used to help people with liver cancer. They are inserted into the tumor to help reduce it and they leave less damage than regular chemotherapy.

The Beauty of Ceramics

Ceramics has marked the progress of civilization for thousands of years, preserving the talents of countless artisans. With very little instruction, there exists the possibility that you, too, can be a part of history. My personal experience with ceramics was brief, but spiritual.

A local Catholic school in my area boasted a wonderful ceramist on staff so I signed up for a beginner's course. The Sister radiated a passion for excellence in ceramic making that insured a high level of interest in her pupils. It was a charming sight watching this holy person working madly amidst flying clay and water. The class was invited to travel to an area in New Jersey that contained a deposit of clay suitable for ceramics. I could not participate in this field trip, but I did get to use some of the clay that they gathered.

After a thorough grounding in the hand building of pots, we chose a design of our own for a project. I fashioned a hanging pot of my own design, hour-glass shaped with a free curve formed bottom and kidney-shaped windows stretching to the top. Every week I shaped and carved the leather-like property of the semi-dry clay until it satisfied my artistic senses. When completely dry, I fired it in a twenty-four inch electric kiln at a temperature of 2300 degrees. An application of a natural brown glaze containing yellow and black speckles required a second firing. The first sight of the true colors of the cooling pot was an unforgettable experience, not a straight line to be found from the inwardly curving bottom to the curves reaching to the top. The annealing took place over a period of several days and the addition of a coarse raffia rope allowed it to hang from the ceiling like an amoebae dividing itself.

The sheer variety of ceramic art objects and their long lasting properties are what make this hobby an exciting world to explore. Everyone should allow their creative selves free rein to fashion directly from mind to hand a piece of their own soul. With materials costing but pennies, every hand-made pot is unique and each one satisfies mankind's urge to create something beautiful and useful.

Other applications of ceramics

* Ceramics are used in the manufacture of knives. The blade of a ceramic knife will stay sharp for much longer than that of a steel knife, although it is more brittle and can be snapped by dropping it on a hard surface.

* Ceramics such as alumina and boron carbide have been used in ballistic armored vests to repel large-calibre rifle fire. Such plates are known commonly as small-arms protective inserts (SAPI). Similar material is used to protect cockpits of some military airplanes, because of the low weight of the material.

* Ceramic balls can be used to replace steel in ball bearings. Their higher hardness means that they are much less susceptible to wear and can offer more than triple lifetimes. They also deform less under load meaning they have less contact with the bearing retainer walls and can roll faster. In very high speed applications, heat from friction during rolling can cause problems for metal bearings; problems which are reduced by the use of ceramics. Ceramics are also more chemically resistant and can be used in wet environments where steel bearings would rust. The two major drawbacks to using ceramics is a significantly higher cost, and susceptibility to damage under shock loads. In many cases their electrically insulating properties may also be valuable in bearings.

* In the early 1980s, Toyota researched production of an adiabatic ceramic engine which can run at a temperature of over 6000°F (3300°C). Ceramic engines do not require a cooling system and hence allow a major weight reduction and therefore greater fuel efficiency. Fuel efficiency of the engine is also higher at high temperature, as shown by Carnot's theorem. In a conventional metallic engine, much of the energy released from the fuel must be dissipated as waste heat in order to prevent a meltdown of the metallic parts. Despite all of these desirable properties, such engines are not in production because the manufacturing of ceramic parts in the requisite precision and durability is difficult. Imperfection in the ceramic leads to cracks, which can lead to potentially dangerous equipment failure. Such engines are possible in laboratory settings, but mass-production is not feasible with current technology.[citation needed]

* Work is being done in developing ceramic parts for gas turbine engines. Currently, even blades made of advanced metal alloys used in the engines' hot section require cooling and careful limiting of operating temperatures. Turbine engines made with ceramics could operate more efficiently, giving aircraft greater range and payload for a set amount of fuel.

* Recently, there have been advances in ceramics which include bio-ceramics, such as dental implants and synthetic bones. Hydroxyapatite, the natural mineral component of bone, has been made synthetically from a number of biological and chemical sources and can be formed into ceramic materials. Orthopedic implants made from these materials bond readily to bone and other tissues in the body without rejection or inflammatory reactions. Because of this, they are of great interest for gene delivery and tissue engineering scaffolds. Most hydroxyapatite ceramics are very porous and lack mechanical strength and are used to coat metal orthopedic devices to aid in forming a bond to bone or as bone fillers. They are also used as fillers for orthopedic plastic screws to aid in reducing the inflammation and increase absorption of these plastic materials. Work is being done to make strong, fully dense nano crystalline hydroxyapatite ceramic materials for orthopedic weight bearing devices, replacing foreign metal and plastic orthopedic materials with a synthetic, but naturally occurring, bone mineral. Ultimately these ceramic materials may be used as bone replacements or with the incorporation of protein collagens, synthetic bones.

* High-tech ceramic is used in watchmaking for producing watch cases. The material is valued by watchmakers for its light weight, scratch-resistance, durability and smooth touch. IWC is one of the brands that initiated the use of ceramic in watchmaking. The case of the IWC 2007 Top Gun edition of the Pilot's Watch Double chronograph is crafted in high-tech black ceramic.[6]



A ceramic material is often understood as restricted to inorganic crystalline oxide material. It is solid and inert. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in shearing and tension. They withstand chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environment. Ceramics generally can withstand very high temperatures such as temperatures that range from 1,000°C to 1,600°C (1,800°F to 3,000°F). Exceptions include inorganic materials that do not include oxygen such as silicon carbide or silicon nitride. A glass is often not understood as a ceramic because of its amorphous (non-crystalline) character. However, glass making involves several steps of the ceramic process and its mechanical properties are similar to ceramic materials.

Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite, whereas more recent materials include aluminium oxide, more commonly known as alumina. The modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide and tungsten carbide. Both are valued for their abrasion resistance, and hence find use in applications such as the wear plates of crushing equipment in mining operations. Advanced ceramics are also used in the medicine, electrical and electronics industries.

Types of ceramic materials

A ceramic material is often understood as restricted to inorganic crystalline oxide material. It is solid and inert. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in shearing and tension. They withstand chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environment. Ceramics generally can withstand very high temperatures such as temperatures that range from 1,000°C to 1,600°C (1,800°F to 3,000°F). Exceptions include inorganic materials that do not include oxygen such as silicon carbide or silicon nitride. A glass is often not understood as a ceramic because of its amorphous (non-crystalline) character. However, glass making involves several steps of the ceramic process and its mechanical properties are similar to ceramic materials.
Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite, whereas more recent materials include aluminium oxide, more commonly known as alumina. The modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide and tungsten carbide. Both are valued for their abrasion resistance, and hence find use in applications such as the wear plates of crushing equipment in mining operations. Advanced ceramics are also used in the medicine, electrical and electronics industries.
Crystalline ceramics
Crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of processing. Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two categories - either make the ceramic in the desired shape, by reaction in situ, or by "forming" powders into the desired shape, and then sintering to form a solid body. Ceramic forming techniques include shaping by hand (sometimes including a rotation process called "throwing"), slip casting, tape casting (used for making very thin ceramic capacitors, etc.), injection moulding, dry pressing, and other variations. (See also Ceramic forming techniques. Details of these processes are described in the two books listed below.) A few methods use a hybrid between the two approaches.
Non-crystalline ceramics
Non-crystalline ceramics, being glasses, tend to be formed from melts. The glass is shaped when either fully molten, by casting, or when in a state of toffee-like viscosity, by methods such as blowing to a mold. If later heat-treatments cause this glass to become partly crystalline, the resulting material is known as a glass-ceramic.

Ceramics

A ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous (e.g., a glass). Because most common ceramics are crystalline, the definition of ceramic is often restricted to inorganic crystalline materials, as opposed to the non-crystalline glasses.

The earliest ceramics were pottery objects made from clay, either by itself or mixed with other materials. Ceramics now includes domestic, industrial and building products and art objects. In the 20th century new ceramic materials were developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering, for example, in semiconductors.

The word ceramic comes from the Greek word κεραμικός (keramikos) meaning pottery, which is said to derive from the Indo-European word ker, meaning heat. Ceramic may be used as an adjective describing a material, product or process; or as a singular noun, or, more commonly, as a plural noun, ceramics.